Review Summary

Angelina Jolie, the flesh-and-blood actress most likely to be mistaken for a computer-generated special effect, plays an F.B.I. profiler on the trail of a sick and ingenious serial killer. Is there any thing more to say? Not really. There is the usual unsurprising surprise twist, the scene where the killer says to the profiler "we're the same" and a succession of gruesome crime-scene images. The film, competently directed by D. J. Caruso, does have one small claim to distinctiveness: it is one of the rare recent movies shot in Canada that is actually set there, rather than in someplace like New York or Chicago. That it is set in Quebec also allowed for the casting of Tchéky Karyo, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Olivier Martinez, three fine French actors who add a soupçon of brooding Gallicism to this slick and phony genre exercise. — A. O. Scott